Monday, 19 May 2014

Police complaint update: 19/5/14

Glasgow complaint

This morning I was contacted by telephone by a Sgt Brown from Aberdeen City Police division of the Police Service of Scotland. He explained that the delay in responding to my complaint had arisen because there had been some discussion around which division would deal with it - Glasgow or Aberdeen. It had now reached his desk and he would make the initial investigations. He outlined the process but indicated that, in this case, it might be slightly different, since, to paraphrase him, the decisions in this case had clearly been made by senior officers and complaints have to be assessed by someone at least one rank above the officer in question so he was not sure where that would go. I resisted the temptation to ask him who was one rank above Stephen House....

Anyway, he took all the details of the complaint, most of which he had, and clarified some issues with me. I remembered some details while I spoke to him such as the fact that we had been filmed by police officers from inside the building and I advised him that three other protesters wished to complain along with me.

He indicated that he did not think that Aberdeen police would have asked for our bus to be followed and, as an aside, said he thought it this was surveillance, they hadn't made a very good job of it since we had spotted them!

He agreed to email me so that I could reply giving some additional details and, when asked, said that their timescale for responding is 56 days but that he would try to complete his investigations sooner.